The DVD won the award for Best DVD 2016/2017 at the Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival in Bologna. [3][4] American film-maker Curtis Harrington was among the latter people to view a print from the Paramount vaults. Select from premium 'The Case Of Lena Smith' of the highest quality. In 1906 her father died of heart failure. ", Sternberg's The Blue Angel, with its innovative use of sound effects and dialogue would open in the city just 10 weeks later. [7][8], The main story of the movie unfolds in Vienna of 1894 (the year of von Sternberg's birth) during a period which saw a doubling of the city's population as agricultural workers from the realms of the decaying Austria-Hungary empire - Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia and Hungary – migrated to the urban centers. A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide. German film critic Gero Gandert provided an overview of the lively commentary among cinephiles that met the release of The Case of Lena Smith (German Title: Eine Nacht im Prater – One Night in the Park) when it opened Berlin on January 29, 1930. Lena brutally is dragged into the prison upon her arrival and whipped by the head matron in an attempt tame her. Fandango FANALERT® Sign up for a FANALERT® to find out when tickets are available in your area. Year : 1929: ENTER CITY, STATE OR ZIP CODE GO. history, Smith s longtime house in South Minneapolis was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 as the Lena O Smith House The Minnesota Smith House Sheldon Smith House Vassar, Michigan W.W. Smith House Sleepy Eye, listed on the NRHP H. Alden Smith … Little is initially known about Lena, except that she worked with Joan on a mission in 1998, in which [10] The character of Lieutenant Franz Holrat, Lena's first husband, is based on the novelist Arthur Schnitzler’s protagonist in Leutnant Gustl (1901).[11]. Lena demurs, but Stephan presents her with 700 crowns – his life savings – and insists that she demand 300 crowns from her husband, that “uniformed poodle” so as to free the child. Joan and Magdalen are the daughters of a fisherman. The sole extant fragment of The Case of Lena Smith brings the director's youthful memories of fin de siècle Vienna vividly to life. The case of Lena Smith Title variations: The case of Lena Smith Director: Von Sternberg, Josef Country(ies): United States Release year: 1929 Genre(s): Silent and Lost That evening at home, Franz pens a letter to his family – a self-pitying farewell. This FAQ is empty. Lena performs menial tasks as a house servant, as do many other young woman in the neighborhood. The elder Hofrat, intent on casting blame on Lena for her son's suicide, attempts to interrogate her. genet-1. The Case of Lena Smith is one of the most noteworthy and important lost films in the history of cinema. Find the perfect 'The Case Of Lena Smith' stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. On her day off, Lena – ostensibly an unmarried woman - takes her little boy to the Prater. A criminal known as Thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. "Probably the most important DVD release of last year" (Jonathan Rosenbaum/Cinema Scope) The focal character is Lena Smith (the name an Austrian bureaucrat bestowed on her to shorten her Hungarian given name).[6]. When Lena informs her husband about the crisis, he lightly dismisses the matter as on one that might bring disgrace to his name. Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend. [The Case of Lena Smith] excites one's interest because of its fine Austrian and Hungarian atmosphere and also through a few well-defined characterizations. Google Calendar ICS. ... See full summary ». Pause Song. Get a sneak peek of the new version of this page. Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. The Case of Lena Smith [37], https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=25195, https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-1563984061/josef-von-sternberg-the-case-of-lena-smith, http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/viennas-prater-district-on-film/, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Case_of_Lena_Smith&oldid=984165758, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. The young man is deploying to fight on the frontlines. [12][13] Film historian Andrew Sarris reports that Sternberg's depiction of the Prater is "one of the most admired sequences in the film" and quotes at length the director's vivid recollection of the Wurstelprater in his memoirs: "Mine was every crevice of the vast amusement park, the like of which never again existed...Hundreds of shooting galleries, Punch and Judy and the inevitable Satan puppet, chalk-faced clowns in the dominoes...leather-faced dummies that groaned when slapped, pirouetting fleas, sword swallowers, tumbling midgets and men on stilts, contortionists, jugglers and acrobats, wild swings with skirts flaring from them...forests of balloons, tattooed athletes, muscle-bulging weight lifters, woman who were sawed in half...grunting knife throwers with screaming targets whose hair flowed down to the hems of their nightgowns, hatchet-throwing Indians and phlegmatic squaws, double-headed calves, members of the fair sex, fat and bearded, with thighs that could pillow and army, magicians who poured jugs of flaming liquid down their throats...and the Chinese mandarin with drooping moustache longer than the tail of a horse revolving on a merry-go-round to the tune of Ion Ivanovici's Donauwellen - and what more could I have asked? The only existing four minute sequence from the film, a trip by the film’s lovers to Vienna’s fabled Prater amusement park. Play Song. The young Hofrat's moral cowardice is compounded by gambling, the debt payments which he extorts from his father. Epilogue – The story flashes back to 1914 as Franz, Jr. bids farewell to his distraught mother Lena. The Case of Lena Smith The Present Recreation Saturday, Apr 22, 2017. The last remaining prints were destroyed by Paramount Pictures shortly after the end of the Second World War for tax purposes. Within a week all showings were discontinued and replaced with Wolf Song, a Gary Cooper and Lupe Vélez vehicle: “Suburban theatre operators wanted productions suitable to show off their new sound reproduction equipment.” Of Sternberg's The Case of Lena Smith, “the daily papers in France took hardly any notice.”[33], This is now considered a lost film. A young man is warned by a captain about a temptress; nonetheless, he finds himself falling in love with her. Title: This page was last edited on 18 October 2020, at 16:01. Read Full Synopsis. The Prater comprises the Wurstelprater – the theme park, a mingling place for all of Vienna’s social strata at the fin-de-siècle. Magdalen leaves her fiancé, Peter, to run off to the big city. When she threatens to go public with facts of the marriage, the court punishes her outburst with a six-month term in the workhouse. Synopsis. Vienna, with a weaker film culture than the vibrant cinephile associations in Berlin, virtually guaranteed the film "was hardly noticed or reviewed at all. [30], The multiple titles, and their unwieldy length created a degree of confusion among reviewers and the public as what the film was about: “moral drama”, “American crime thriller” or “tragedy of a single mother.” [31] Lacking “simple themes” and “uncomplicated action”, the movie was not a box-office success and like most silent films distributed during the transition to sound, The Case of Lena Smith “fell by the wayside.” [32], Paramount Pictures screened The Case of Lena Smith (French title - La Calvaire de Lena X - The Calvary (mental suffering) of Lena X) at its flagship theatre in Paris on May 23, 1930. Reviews, interviews and features from the international film magazine. As police councilor, he orders the child seized and placed in an orphanage for the poor. Joan and Peter marry. Need some help finding the best things to watch on Netflix? The Case of Lena Smith is a 1929 American silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Esther Ralston and James Hall, and released by Paramount Pictures. The work was the last of Sternberg's eight silent films and one of three in his career set in the city of his birth and childhood: Vienna. To regain custody of her child from the poor house, she must pay a fee of 1,000 crowns. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Lena and her spouse Franz are estranged and refrain from associating with each other – on the young husband's insistence. Destijds werd de film in Nederland uitgebracht onder de titel De zaak Lena Smith. Tweet About the film. Lena makes a desperate escape over a barbed wire fence, barely eluding the guards. There she has an unpleasant encounter with the janitor who serves at the Hofrat apartments. Social. Herr Hofrat is relieved when he visits his son's apartment, unannounced, and Lena is not there. The Austrian Secret Service sends its most seductive agent to spy on the Russians. April 2009. The Case of Lena Smith is een Amerikaanse dramafilm uit 1929 onder regie van Josef von Sternberg. Commenting on the experience in Sight & Sound (February 17, 1949), Harrington wrote: “The Case of Lena Smith may be regarded as von Sternberg’s most successful attempt at combining a story of meaning and purpose with his very original style.”[5], The following plot summary is derived from the 10-page “Sequence Summary” issued by Paramount’s Story Department (October 28, 1928). Plot. The elder Hofrat is alerted to Lena's nocturnal excursions and suspects she may be involved with his son. When Lena, distracted, appeals to administrators at the Bureau of Morals to discover the whereabouts of her little Franz, they disclose that she has been deemed an “unfit” mother. Vienna's Prater District on Film, or: Looking at the World Again. Use the HTML below. The young officer has arranged employment for Lena in his parent's petty-bourgeois household, who know nothing of their servant's clandestine marriage to their son, nor that they are grandparents a little Franz. Boston University Libraries. Lena visits her 3-year-old son Franz at the house of Stephan's sister, who lives in Vienna – secretly, and only after nightfall. The Case of Lena Smith is a 1929 American silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Esther Ralston and James Hall, and released by Paramount Pictures. Lena attends the inquest for her husband's death. A policeman separates the two rivals. Fleeing his estate to join a band of gypsies, the mentally unstable painter falls in love with a pretty gypsy maiden, Silda. "[29], Unlike Berlin reviewers, Viennese commentators did not address any pro- or anti-Austrian perceptions regarding the film. The Case of Lena Smith is ranked by film critics as among the “lost masterpieces” of the silent era and the Holy Grail for archivists who sift through film repositories. Pol's estimate of Sternberg's talent included praise for “that razor-sharp line between art and non-art.”[27], Politically conservative critics expressed displeasure with the films depiction of the Viennese social order, particularly the scenes portraying Austrian petty-bourgeois under the Habsburg monarchy. The sole extant fragment of The Case of Lena Smith has been published on DVD by the Austrian Film Museum. Robbed of her child first when he is a baby, and later when they are separated by the war, she suffers imprisonment, contempt, and shame in order to protect the child. [9], Sternberg presents the full range of social types who inhabited “the ethnic melting pot of the Viennese population” at the turn of the century. She is devoid of any patriotic fervor. The two other movies are Dishonored (1931) and The King Steps Out (1936). [The Case of Lena Smith] excites one's interest because of its fine Austrian and Hungarian atmosphere and also through a few well-defined characterizations. Franz knows his is outmatched when he realizes that the farmer is Lena's true champion. 8 PM (89 mins) BAMPFA. In 1905 Smith moved with her father to Buxton, Iowa and worked at the company store of the coal mine located there. The Case of Lena Smith is a 1929 American silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Esther Ralston and James Hall, and released by Paramount Pictures. (1929). [1] Van de film is thans slechts een fragment van 4 minuten bewaard gebleven. Whether you're ready for the return of your favorite show or need to catch up, May is packed with an array of returning series. 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